The Good at Heart

by Ursula Werner

  “The dishes, Max,” his mother reminded him.

  Max was already in the hallway, wrapping the repulsive envelope in layers of old newspaper to suppress its stench. “I’ll do them when I get home!” He stuffed the package in the back of his waistband and ran out the door.

  – Twenty-One –

  Marina didn’t often smoke cigarettes, but tonight she felt the need for one. Something that would make her breathe in deeply, rhythmically, calm herself down. Because in the past twenty-four hours, her mind had become overwhelmed with questions. Where would she and Johann hide their Polish family until Fritz’s truck was ready? Meerfeld was no longer an option, given all the security precautions near the Weber estate and beyond. Storm troopers in black boots and red armbands were buzzing around the lakefront road between Meerfeld and Blumental. She wouldn’t want to steer a pair of nervous refugees through those hornets. Thankfully, Marina had almost tripped over Max Fuchs this afternoon, when she walked up to the house after looking for Oskar and Sofia. She had written a quick note to Johann, and Max agreed to deliver it immediately. Hopefully, Johann would be able to meet her tomorrow morning before he went to pick up his charges. In the meantime, all she could do was wait. Wait for Johann tomorrow and for Erich tonight.

  Marina decided to smoke in the arbor, where she couldn’t be seen from the house. The arbor had originally been intended as a venue for afternoon coffee. Summer weekends, as Edith had imagined them before the war, would be filled with visits from Berlin friends, who would bring their children. They would spend mornings exploring the lake, perhaps wandering the kaleidoscopic gardens of Insel Hagentau or peering down into the seventh-century dungeon of the old castle in Seeburg. Then they’d gather at the house for a grand midday meal and a postprandial rest. In the afternoons, an avalanche of children would cascade down the hill after naptime, ready to splash and paddle in the lake, no matter how cold the water. Of course, the parents would need some sort of refuge, some hidden oasis of peace and quiet where they could sip their coffee at leisure, so that first summer in Blumental, Edith had asked Oskar to construct a simple lattice above the arbor, over which grape vines could spread their shade and protect women from the sun’s freckling powers. Where women sought refuge, Edith knew, men would soon follow. She purchased a wrought-iron table and a set of chairs and yards of colorful fabric from which she began to sew a platoon of pillows to complement her pansies. As a surprise to Edith, Oskar had enlisted the help of a local plumber, who installed a small well and fountain. Oskar presented it to his wife on the eve of their thirtieth wedding anniversary, wrapping a dish towel around her eyes and leading her into the garden, where a thin stream of water trickled from an open faucet into a marble basin. Marina could not resist following them to observe the grand unveiling. “Now, you’ll need to choose a statue to complete this,” Oskar had said, taking the blindfold off.

  “Oh, Oskar!” Edith had beamed. She’d bent toward the small pool of water, resting one hand on its lightly rippling surface. “It’s so lovely.”

  “I wasn’t sure what kind of statue you might want, my dear,” Oskar elaborated. “There are so many to choose from—fish and frogs, bears and lions, elephants, if you like. Angels of all kinds. Even Greek gods and goddesses.”

  “Daphne?” Edith turned her head.

  When Oskar looked confused, Marina explained, “The wood nymph who bewitched Apollo.”

  “Ach, ‘bewitched’!” Edith interjected. “She narrowly escaped being raped by that lout.”

  “Lout?” Oskar mused. “Wasn’t Apollo a god?”

  “God of the sun,” Marina said.

  “Seems to me like she might have felt honored by his attentions.”

  “Really, Oskar?” Edith turned to face him. “That solar Casanova? He just wanted another notch on his Olympian sash. And she wasn’t about to give up her virginity for anything less than true and lasting love. So her father turned her into a laurel tree.”

  “Hmm,” Oskar said. “Seems like a drastic solution.”

  Edith ignored his sarcasm. “She’s the original earth mother. Human maternal instincts merged with arboreal sensitivities.”

  Eventually, Edith did manage to find a statue of Daphne, but because of the war, her dreams of afternoon coffee gatherings never materialized. The grapevines grew unimpeded and over the years formed a dense mass of leaves and branches, as did the hazelnut bushes that Edith planted along the arbor’s perimeters. On warm summer nights such as this one, the moisture from the fountain created a perfectly humidified playground for fireflies, and a small band of them were now flitting around Daphne’s outstretched arms.

  Marina sat down on the pillow-upholstered bench tucked into the hazelnuts. She patted the pillows and leaned back, closing her eyes and trying to let the sound of the running water soothe her. Was it her mind that needed quieting or her heart? Both. She felt fidgety and crossed her legs, right over left, then left over right. She took a cigarette out of the silver case she kept in her skirt pocket, lit it, and inhaled. Much better, she thought, feeling her shoulder blades relax and drop. Her exhalation was long and slow. She watched the smoke curl upward, a soft gray ribbon spiraling into the still air. Away from her current world, where families fled from machine guns and mayors were terrorized, where sanity and order depended on the fortuitous arrival of an army general. Would Erich’s appearance in her life always be sudden and unexpected? Would she always have to let him go and wait for him to return, without any certainty as to when, or if, he would come back? The words her mother had spoken in the kitchen earlier weighed heavily on Marina. Edith had asked her to wait, without acknowledging that Marina had been doing just that ever since the war began. She was tired of waiting. Wasn’t she allowed, for once, to make the choice she wanted?

  But she didn’t want to leave her girls behind. That, of course, was what made the choice so unthinkable. And Franz—where was Franz at this moment? She thought of his gentle blue eyes, now distant and lost, their blue haunted by dark shadows like a sea beset by tempests. These were not the eyes that she had met in Grosswald, not the eyes that had taken her in with such appreciation the night they went to see The Blue Angel.

  Marina took another drag of her cigarette, thinking back on that night, which was, in so many ways, fateful. The movie had not been their first date. They had imbibed countless cups of coffee together and attended several matinee films. Franz would have continued taking Marina out for afternoon coffee indefinitely had she not insisted on an evening rendezvous. Franz in the daytime was just the tiniest bit dull, and Marina had hoped that the mystery of nighttime might draw out a wilder side of him.

  She remembered him watching her come down the stairs that night, remembered feeling his discomfort as he stood there in the living room with Oskar, even as he savored her appearance. Marina had chosen not to wear a dress but rather a flowered silk blouse and an ivory linen skirt that she had hemmed just that afternoon so that it showed off her calves to better effect, which didn’t escape Franz’s notice. He was the perfect gentleman, standing up quickly the moment she entered the room, staring at her with awe. Oskar rose too, more slowly but equally cognizant of his daughter’s beauty. “You look almost too lovely to release upon the world outside that front door, my dear,” Oskar said, winking. He glanced at Franz. “Are you prepared, young man, to facilitate the assimilation of my daughter into the society of Philistines out there? To smooth the passage of her beauty through their pockets of pollution? To defend her virtue against all physical and moral onslaught?”

  Franz looked confused. In his distress, he turned his gaze to the chenille pillows on the sofa and studied them. Marina stepped forward and grabbed Franz by the hand. “Vati, please. Enough with the speeches. We’ll be back by midnight.” She steered Franz toward the front entrance.

  Oskar held up two fingers. “Eleven o’clock, please, no later than eleven. Not,” he said, cutting off Marina’s protest, “because you are too young to stay out later—though in
my opinion you are, your mother has convinced me to relent—but because it is safer. Berlin is far too restless these days. Can we agree on this?”

  “I’ll have her back precisely at eleven o’clock, sir, if not before,” Franz said eagerly. He helped Marina with her coat, then offered her the crook of his left arm as Oskar held the door open for them.

  The night had been crisp and clear, ideal for walking. There was still plenty of time before the movie, so they decided to forgo a cab and stroll over to the theater. As they headed toward Unter den Linden, the city’s cultural boulevard, Marina caught sight of the moon, a glowing pale globe rising above the horizon. She stopped and grabbed hold of Franz’s arm. “Look at the moon, Franz!”

  Franz followed her gaze and smiled. “Ah, the moon illusion. Fascinating, isn’t it? I love the way our brains can trick us.” Marina had expected some sort of appreciative murmur about the moon’s size or color. She had even dared to hope for a snippet of poetry praising the moon’s general appearance. But this response took her completely by surprise.

  “The moon illusion?” she repeated.

  “Yes, the way we think the moon is bigger when it’s coming up on the horizon than when it’s directly overhead, that’s what I mean,” Franz explained. Marina recognized the musing tilt of his head that meant he was about to lapse into science-teacher mode. She was not in the mood for a lesson but didn’t know how to stop him without appearing rude. “Tell me,” he continued, eager to make the point, “don’t you think the moon looks bigger at this moment? Bigger than the last time you saw it in the sky?”

  “Of course,” Marina said. “It’s huge.”

  Franz pressed on. “Why do you think it looks bigger now?”

  “Well,” Marina said carefully, “I don’t really know, but I imagine it might have something to do with distortion from the atmosphere, maybe. Or the distance to the horizon as opposed to the distance to outer space.”

  “No. And kind of.” Franz was pleased that the way was open for further instruction. “The moon isn’t really any larger now than when it’s overhead later at night, it’s just our brains that make us think so. It’s because we think of the sky as having the shape of a hemisphere above us, but we perceive it differently, as a flattened bowl.” Franz stopped, evidently satisfied with his explanation, and nodded to himself. They turned onto the grand boulevard, its daytime buzz of shoppers and office workers replaced with nighttime activity. In front of the State Opera house, cabs lined up, discharging passengers for an evening performance.

  Marina did not really care about Franz’s moon illusion, nor why it existed. She cared about the moon’s beauty, inscrutability, romance; about the emotions the moon stirred within her, a complex mixture of passion and fear, desire and loss. But this precise, methodical analysis ignored all of those feelings. She was becoming irritated, and distracted herself by looking over to the opera house to see what was playing.

  A nearby poster announced the current performance: THE MAGIC FLUTE: PLAYING TONIGHT! Marina sighed. She loved this Mozart piece. It was the first opera she’d ever been to—ages ago, it seemed, when she was ten. Oskar bought tickets for the family, and Erich introduced her to the music weeks beforehand, explaining the story and outlining the characters. Tamino, the noble prince. Pamina, the beautiful princess. Sarastro, the sorcerer whose goodness is hidden, and the Queen of the Night, who masks her evil. Best was Papageno, the bird-clown who celebrates life. Marina remembered Papageno as he appeared onstage, bedecked in vibrant, multicolored feathers that fluttered loose from him as he flapped and sang his way around the set. She had laughed uproariously at his antics. At the end of the performance, Erich had gone up to the stage and retrieved for Marina one perfect, bright turquoise plume.

  Now Marina looked across the boulevard to the opera house, where women in long gowns were ascending the stone staircases, pursued by men in tuxedos and dark suits. Bright, colorful banners hung suspended between the marble columns, and the illuminated entranceway beckoned everyone over. Suddenly, she caught her breath. There, going up the steps at the right side of the building—was that Erich? She squinted her eyes to focus more closely. The man turned to offer his arm to a woman just one step below him, and Marina saw his face in the reflected light. It was Erich. But who was he with? All Marina could see was the woman’s long dark hair and her emerald skirt sweeping the ground. The woman put her hand on Erich’s forearm and they disappeared behind a banner advertising Der Rosenkavalier, an upcoming attraction.

  Marina felt numb. She had never before seen Erich with a woman, and the sight unnerved her. She chided herself for the reaction. It was perfectly natural that Erich should invite a woman to the opera, and if he was looking for female companionship, he might as well ask a woman who was attractive, as this woman appeared to be, at least from a distance. She wondered who the woman was and how they knew each other. At the Military Academy, Erich would not have had occasion to meet many women, would he? Marina imagined that there were women who frequented the sidewalks outside the academy, predators waiting to catch an unsuspecting officer with a good salary. Probably this woman belonged in that category. But why would Erich take her to this opera, their opera? If he really wanted to see this performance, he could have invited Marina. She would have been more than happy to go on a date with him. But Erich would not think of her as a date. She was likely still a child in his eyes. Marina bit her lip in frustration and anger. She felt betrayed.

  “Two, please,” Franz said to the woman in the ticket booth at the movie house. Marina pulled out the elastic band holding her hair and shook it free. She wasn’t a child. She took Franz’s hand as they entered the darkened theater. Franz headed toward the front, but she steered him to the back row. “Tonight,” she whispered, “I want more privacy.”

  In the arbor, Marina exhaled another cloud of smoke at a cluster of fireflies. One day she would have to see The Blue Angel again. The first talking movie she had ever seen, yet she remembered very little of it, just snippets. The maid tossing a dead canary into the furnace (“It stopped singing long ago”), Marlene Dietrich dropping her bloomers from the top of a staircase onto Professor Rath’s shoulder. At the same time, Marina had been taking off her own panties and, emboldened by the certainty of her outrage and hurt, she had undone Franz’s trousers.

  Some people might have seen her behavior as reckless. They would also have considered Lara’s arrival nine months later just penance for Marina and Franz’s indiscretion. Thankfully, Edith was not among this group. Instead, when Marina confirmed her mother’s suspicions about her sudden inability to tolerate breakfast, Edith was too pragmatic to engage in recrimination and despair. What was done was done, and Edith jumped straight to wedding preparations. She saw no reason to inform Oskar, who was preoccupied with the country’s looming economic collapse, about the precipitating event in their daughter’s change of status. As for Franz, he didn’t hesitate in doing the right thing, for responsibility and propriety were embedded in him, and he loved Marina. Franz told her on their wedding night that he’d never dreamed he would be lucky enough to have her as his wife. He stood before the bed she was sitting on and thanked her for marrying him. He promised always to love her and their baby, to take care of them, to provide them with a home and the amenities of life. “All the comforts I can afford,” he had said, “for as long as I can afford them.”

  And Marina loved Franz as well. It was impossible not to love him—his insistent curiosity about the world around him; his quiet sensitivity to all living creatures, human and animal; his kindness and generosity toward everyone who asked for his help. When Marina thought about her love for Franz, she realized that she had loved him even before she took that bold sexual step that ultimately bound them. Franz was someone she could count on, and that was a significant asset at a time when so much felt unsettled. If she had to describe her love for her husband, Marina would have said that it was measured and steady, free from intense emotions or unbridled ardor.


  It was a love that Marina had thought she could live with, especially after Lara appeared and upended everything in her world. Flush with her new sense of maternal purpose, Marina was not even aware that she had a passionate nature, nor, as time went on, that she was stifling it. Seven years later, when Erich finally kindled that flame in Ludwigsfelde, the result was an inferno that Marina could not extinguish. Nor, she discovered, did she want to, for she relished how it made her feel: alive and awake, more sharply defined. The surrounding world shed its muted shadows and acquired crisp edges. It was as if, having spent a lifetime underwater, looking at the world through scratched and clouded glass, she’d suddenly surfaced and removed her goggles.

  Perhaps that was what had attracted her to Johann’s enterprise, Marina thought now. Danger could mimic passion in reducing life to its essence. She rolled the cigarette between her fingers, wondering about the family arriving tomorrow. At the beginning of their journey they had been five, and now they were two. She could imagine all too well how that reduction might have occurred. She had seen it firsthand in Berlin, back when the city was “cleansing” itself of Jews by shipping them off to God only knew where. She wondered whether it was the children or the parents who had survived, or perhaps it was one of each. The cigarette ember reached Marina’s fingers, and the sudden heat made her drop the butt into the dirt. Smoking was a dangerous pastime for the distracted, she thought, and looked over at Daphne.

  “Will we ever be free of this constant feeling of danger?” she asked aloud. Daphne, of course, did not answer.

  – Twenty-Two –

  The day’s cooking and baking activities had taken their toll on Edith. She let her hands rest in the warm dishwater to soothe her aching knuckles. Oskar was upstairs putting the younger girls to bed. Lara had retreated to the living room to read. And Marina had gone to the garden after dinner, telling Edith to leave the dishes for later. Edith, however, was ready for bed, and she couldn’t go upstairs until the kitchen was clean. Wouldn’t life be easier if she could just walk away from dirty dishes or dusty bookshelves or untidy bedrooms? she thought. But she knew she couldn’t. It was hard for her to let things go, in all facets of her life. After emptying the sink and drying her hands, she walked into the living room to kiss Lara good night. There sat her eldest granddaughter, in Oskar’s favorite chair, legs curled under her dress, buried in her Life magazine. All that was visible of Lara’s head were waves of golden hair above the cover photograph of Princess Elizabeth. “So how are you enjoying your princess, my dear?” Edith asked.